Move and win roundup: Week of August 16, 2021

Dentsu has launched a unified Merkle-led CXM proposition in India following the restructure of its creative and media businesses. The customer experience unit brings together data transformation, digital transformation, and CX consulting into one unit, housing agencies Sokrati, Fractal Ink Design Studio and Merkle B2B. Anubhav Sonthalia will lead Dentsu CXM in India as CEO, in addition to serving his current role as CEO, Sokrati. He will continue to report into Dentsu India CEO Anand Bhadkamkar and Dentsu CXM APAC CEO Z Shen.

TheAsianparent, the content and community platform for parents in Asia, has hired its first chief commercial officer in Akshay Trivedi. Bringing almost two decades of experience in digital marketing, customer engagement, sales and market research, Trivedi will aim to boost the company's market share and revenue through online/offline opportunities and product and service innovations. He was previously regional director APAC of digital, media and content excellence at Johnson & Johnson, and director at Edelman Digital.

Hill+Knowlton Strategies has appointed Iris Liu as SVP to lead H+K China’s corporate and performance communications practice. Based in Beijing, Liu will also serve as general manager of H+K’s office in Beijing. With 13 years of industry experience, Liu was most recently assistant CEO and VP at Shunya International, a leading Chinese PR agency. Throughout her career she has served brands including Changan Ford, Baidu, Shell, Analog Devices, SanDisk and Blizzard. She will report to Jun Xu, CEO of H+K China.

Carlsberg Malaysia has appointed Lion & Lion to lead 1664 Blanc’s social media accounts within the Malaysian market. The partnership, which officially kicked off on August 1, will see the agency developing a comprehensive content strategy plan for the brand involving creative social experiences that relate to the brand’s global tagline of 'good taste with a twist'.

ADA has hired Sherry Tan as regional head of ecommerce to support the growing demand for ecommerce capabilities in APAC. Tan was previously chief business officer of Lazada Malaysia. She will lead a regional team responsible for delivering integrated commerce services to ADA’s current and potential clients. She reports to chief operating officer Anurag Gupta.

Ogilvy Malaysia has appointed Debdan Banerjee as head of integrated strategy. Banerjee has been tasked with leading the office’s strategy department, ensuring strategic integrity and effectiveness across all clients and capabilities. He will dual report to Malaysia CEO Nizwani Shahar and chief strategy officer of Singapore and Malaysia, Jason Hill. Banerjee joins Ogilvy from Entropia and prior to that, spent a large part of his career at Leo Burnett, working on brands such as Petronas, Tenaga Nasional, AIA, Dutch Lady, Samsung and Yes Mobile.

Insights consultancy Bastion Insights has appointed Ali Dexter as co-CEO. She joins from market research and insights agency T garage where she spent four years as director of insights and strategy. Prior to that, she spent 12 years in leadership roles at Kantar. Dexter will lead the team in Melbourne and work with Peter Harris, recently appointed in the Sydney office. The joint CEO appointments are in line with succession planning by Bastion Insights founder Dianne Gardiner, who steps aside from the CEO role, moving to a role as executive director.

Flare Communications Group appointed Pheona Cheng as director and Bastian Wong as CEO and managing director. Wong is the agency's founder. Cheng has been with the agency for two years as associate director of client services and strategy. Prior to that, she was with Moët Hennessy Diageo Hong Kong as brand manager of Moët & Chandon and Belvedere. She will manage the group's key businesses and service development while also overseeing HR and talent growth. Wong will continue to mentor talents and rising stars, the agency said. 

HMD Global, the owner of Nokia-brand phones and accessories, has appointed global marketing agency Team Lewis, as its agency partner to drive its social and public relations campaigns in Malaysia. The agency will provide brand, communications and issues consultancy, as well as media relations, content creation and monitoring for Nokia mobile within Malaysia.

Dentsu International Hong Kong has hired David Chan as head of trading and partnership for its media service line. Chan will oversee all delivery of media investment and trading capabilities across the network, as well as the development of partner solutions with media and tech allies. He will report to media CEO Anna Chan. He was most recently MD of Publicis Media Hong Kong, prior to which he held several finance roles at the agency. In his early career, he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Arthur Andersen & Co. He is also a member of Hong Kong Institutes of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA) and Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA).

Golin has promoted Jane Morgan to head of client services Asia-Pacific. In this new role she will refresh how Golin delivers work for its clients, working with account teams across the region to ensure they have the frameworks needed to deliver meaningful work. One of her first remits will be creating the Asia Top Client Leadership Programme, aimed at giving exclusive opportunities and experiences to Golin Asia’s largest clients. Based in Hong Kong, Morgan will also continue her role as MD of Hong Kong and continue to report into APAC president Darren Burns.

Integral Ad Science (IAS) is expanding its centre of excellence in Pune, India with a new office facility and plans to ramp up engineering talent. Established in 2020, the centre of excellence focuses on developing digital ad verification technology, driving partner integrations and providing customer experience support. It is led by Mehul Desai, India country head and VP engineering and operations. 

Global production company Sweetshop has signed director Matthys Boshoff for representation exclusively in China and Hong Kong and for non-exclusive representation in Southeast Asia. Boshoff takes a mixed-media approach to commercial filmmaking, blending storytelling and performances with cinematic visuals, VFX and in-camera trickery. He has worked with brands including Subaru, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Discovery Bank, DBS Bank, Vitality, Changi Airport Group and Singapore Tourism Board.

Ants Digital, a tech-led marketing agency based out of Gurgaon, has appointed Sai Krishna as the branch head for the South Region. Krishna will be based out of Hyderabad and will overlook the operations for all the key markets in South. He joins Ants after working for E&Y where he was responsible for strategic business consulting in the areas of digital communication, client coordination, performance and process improvement.

Alpha Digital has announced it has won six new clients wins since the start of 2021, including Michael Hill Jewellers, Medley, Amart Furniture, Scotch & Soda, Lorna Jane and Travello. Each of the new clients have appointed Alpha Digital for a number of different services, ranging from performance, content marketing, strategy and experience. Once pure-play performance, the agency has over the past year developed new capability in strategy and holistic digital media planning and buying.

Dentsu International announced the expansion of its customer experience management (CXM) service line with the launch of Merkle in Hong Kong. The network has appointed Nathan Petralia as the general manager for Merkle & Dentsu CXM Hong Kong, reporting to Simone Tam, CEO, Dentsu International Hong Kong. Petralia brings over 15 years of experience in digital transformation, data, CRM, and omnichannel marketing, and was previously with Isobar Commerce.  

Wunderman Thompson China has strengthened its creative and strategic capabilities with the appointments of Raymond Chin as chief creative officer and Joyce Ling as chief strategy officer, under the leadership of Carter Chow, chief executive officer. With 20 years of experience as a creative, Chin returns to the Wunderman Thompson after serving as Accenture Interactive's chief experience officer, leading Droga5 in the market.  Joining Chin in returning to Wunderman Thompson is Ling, who was previously the chief strategy officer for J. Walter Thompson, Greater China and propr to that also chief strategy officer at McCann Worldgroup China, and vice president of Strategy at Publicis.Sapient. 

GroupM has expanded expands Arshan Saha’s role to APAC CEO of Xaxis & Specialty Businesses, APAC. Saha’s previous title was CEO of Xaxis APAC. In his new role, he will lead GroupM’s data-driven specialty businesses including Xaxis (Programmatic), INCA (Influencer Marketing), Finecast (Addressable TV), Sightline (Addressable Out-of-Home) and Acceleration (Data & Tech Consultancy practice).

Digital marketing agency Agnes Media has appointed former Googler Riya Mukherjee as senior performance manager. Having spent almost a decade at Google in India, culminating in her promotion to program manager and support expert, Mukherjee moved to Sydney in 2018 to become performance specialist at Columbus and then senior digital performance marketing manager at Alley.
Mukherjee will lead the performance planning at independent measurement-first agency Agnes Media, working across its diverse and expanding client base.

Till Payments, an Australia-based payments solutions provider, has appointed specialist retail and innovation creative agency, The General Store, and independent public relations agency, DEC PR to enhance its marketing and innovation capability. The agencies will collaborate with Till Payments’ in-house Brand & Customer Experience team, focussing on developing brand awareness and positioning the business as an industry leader in the Australian and international payments space. The General Store will manage market analysis, consumer insights and segmentation, brand strategy and identity, as well as design and build a new website build. DEC PR will be focused on growing the Till Payments brand and managing corporate reputation through storytelling and integrated marketing activities.

Attention-based ad company Playground xyz has tapped Kevin Smyth, who previously led the expansion of Magnite’s (formerly Telaria) digital SSP business across Southeast Asia, as head of sales for Asia. Smyth brings over 17 years of experience across online and offline media including roles at Magnite, Crimson Tangerine, Adconion, Miva and JCDecaux. At Playground xyz, he will be charged with accelerating the company’s operations in the region.

TotallyAwesome has hired two media executives to accelerate its insights and client engagement with teens. Tony Bell joins as commercial director and Florian Schwinn has been appointed as programmatic lead in operations. Bell was formerly national sales director at The Guardian Australia for more than five years and ANZ general manager of Storyful. Schwinn joins from DAZN Group where he was head of programmatic for Southeast Asia, prior to which he was APAC programmatic director at GroupM's mPlatform. Both will work closely with TotallyAwesome’s head of data, research and insights Alice Almeida.

Communications agency Think HQ has announced a raft of appointments across new business, research, digital and PR. New hires include business development director Sam Ireland, research analyst Dr Andre Gulyas, digital content specialist Beaurey Chan, senior account executive Laura Kennewell and account director (PR) Eleanor McLeod. Ireland will take Think HQ’s offering to values-aligned commercial clients—a new market for the agency that has until now focused on government and for-purpose clients including not for profits. He brings experience in media sales and marketing including roles with Nine Entertainment and The Guardian Australia. Most recently, he worked in a communications capacity on a United Nations project to reduce plastic waste in oceans. Gulyas will use his expertise in research design, organisational psychology and data-driven quantitative analyses to spearhead a new team integrating research into campaign builds. Chan joins from Columbus where she was responsible for production of content for clients including Officeworks, The Coffee Club and the Federal Government. Kennewell has worked on some of Australia’s biggest retail campaigns for clients including Myer, Bunnings and Kmart and also brings experience in the sustainable retail sector. McLeod has worked at the BBC, Cox Inall Change and Yarra Trams.

FleishmanHillard promoted Yisi Liu from senior vice president, senior partner and general manager of its Shanghai operations to managing director China, overseeing all Mainland operations. He has been Shanghai GM since 2018. In addition the company:

• Promoted Shijun Ma, senior vice president, partner and head of FleishmanHillard’s corporate affairs team in Beijing, to general manager of corporate affairs in China. 
• Hired Helen Shen, based in Guangzhou, as senior vice president and head of FleishmanHillard Greater Bay Area (GBA). She was previously general manager of SPRG Beijing and has also worked for Blue Focus.
• Promoted Norman Li, based in Beijing, to senior vice president and partner, head of consumer marketing in China. 
• Announced that Michaela Wang, senior vice president, partner and head of corporate affairs in Shanghai, will add the role of deputy general manager for the office.
• Named as partner Ta Na, chief financial officer for FleishmanHillard China, in recognition of her long-serving dedication to operational excellence.
• Announced that Suki Zhao, senior vice president and head of the agency’s sports and entertainment practice in the APAC region, was promoted to head of China operations for BlueCurrent Group, which is a wholly owned sister agency of FleishmanHillard.

BBDO Greater China appointed Hoho Liu as ECD at BBDO Taiwan. He was previously general manager of Toplan, vice president and ECD at Havas and co-ECD of I Am David. He has worked with brands including 7-11, Weidan, Weili Fried Noodles, Starlux, Hyundai, Volvo and Zespri. 

Beiersdorf appointed Red Havas to drive socially-led campaigns for its skincare brands across ANZ following a pitch. The three-year appointment will see Red Havas take responsibility for delivering the socially-led communication strategy and implementation across social content, creation, influencer marketing and PR for Beiersdorf in Australia and New Zealand.

Jakarta-based MNC Group selected SpotX, the global video advertising and monetisation platform that is now part of Magnite, as its first video SSP to accelerate inventory monetization for its online streaming services, Vision+ and RCTI+.

Digital marketing agency Tug was appointed to manage the $8 million global performance media business for Australian legal software provider Leap. The client appointed Tug in June to handle its paid digital performance strategy and buying in Australia, and has now extended that remit, adding its United States, Canada and UK operations. The work will include managing display, social, PPC, SEO, specialist legal media and software directories as well as data and analytics for the four markets, led by Tug’s Sydney team and executed in-market by Tug’s local agency teams in Toronto and London.

Independent creative agency SLIK added Iseekplant to its client roster, creating a brand awareness campaign for the B2B construction marketplace. Moving forward, SLIK will be Iseekplant’s strategy and creative partner, looking after all sides of the business.